Alien Encounter
by amandajbruce
Summary: Lilly experiences a close encounter of the Oliver kind. Set right after the epsidoe "Papa's Got A Brand New Friend."


A/N: So, for everyone who asked for it, you can consider this a companion to I Love Cake. Kind of. I hope it is appropriately tension filled for all of you.

Alien Encounter

The door to Oliver's room flew open and collided with the wall behind it with a crack. Thinking he was about to be attacked, he almost fell off his bed in a combination of shock and fear, taking the bowl of popcorn with him. He had been peacefully enjoying a movie when the force that was his best friend almost knocked his bedroom door off its hinges.

"What the hell, Lilly? You could knock! You almost gave me a heart attack!" Oliver settled back into his bed, then narrowed his eyes. "What are you wearing?"

Lilly paused to close the door before asking, "First of all, were you doing something that I'm not supposed to see?" She gave him a pointed look and he rolled his eyes. "And second, what do you mean, what am I wearing?"

She looked down at her clothes. She was wearing her Lola outfit from her time at the dance rehearsal space with Hannah, or most of it anyway. She had removed a lot of the accessories and extra layers, including the wig.

"You don't have any shoes on," Oliver pointed out. For some reason, that seemed to be the pertinent point for him.

"I was Lola. I left my shoes and stuff in Miley's car, or Hannah's car, I guess," Lilly explained. She edged her way closer to his bed, but didn't sit. Oliver was sprawled across it with his bowl of popcorn, apparently watching a movie on the new television he had been given recently that he was so proud of, and she didn't really want to be that close to him on a bed. Now that she was thinking about it, this was probably the first time she had been alone in his room with him in several months. Maybe it wasn't a good idea.

"Ah, that also explains the makeup." Oliver paused the movie, placing the bowl of popcorn on the stand next to his bed, and scooted to one side so she could sit.

"You're one to talk. Are you wearing tin foil?"

"I don't think they make tin foil anymore."

Lilly poked Oliver in the leg. He was wearing some sort of strange silver and shiny jumpsuit that he had unzipped to his waist, but had decided to leave on. She pulled at the sleeve that was laying next to him on the bed, and tried not to notice that the shirt he was wearing was not really a shirt, but a wife beater. It wasn't like she hadn't seen him in less. Maybe she shouldn't have closed the door. She was starting to feel a little light headed. She focused on the space age jump suit to keep her thoughts going in one direction.

"Seriously, what is this?"

"My calling the aliens outfit."

He said it so matter-of-factly that Lilly was not entirely sure how to respond to that.

"Does it have anything to do with the message you left me that said, 'need to talk now,' followed by a dial tone?" She asked him, stretching out on the bed next to him, holding her breath until she was sure she was not going to accidentally bump his arm with hers.

"Oh, you mean the one I left you two hours ago?" His voice was still even, but he was staring straight ahead at the image of Christian Bale as Batman frozen on the screen. Oliver held himself perfectly still. The fact that he and Lilly had not both been on his bed at the same time since before he started dating Joanie was not lost on him.

Lilly sighed, turning her head to look at him. "Yes, that one. You scared me a little, hence the door slamming. I told you, Lola was with Hannah. I had to wait until she could drop me at home. And I came straight here instead."

"Did you tell Miley?" Oliver asked softly. Lilly's use of the word "hence" was normally something he would make fun of, but his eyes had widened when Lilly mentioned Hannah. He hadn't really considered that leaving Lilly a message like that might make her worried, or make her talk to Miley about it.

"No. Was I supposed to?" She had thought that Oliver leaving such a short message without saying anything about needing to talk to both of his friends meant that she was not actually supposed to tell Miley anything.

"No."

Lilly waited for him to continue, but Oliver was still staring straight ahead, at the unmoving Batman on his television. She remained silent for a little longer, but when her gaze flicked to the screen, she realized something she should have as soon as he pushed the pause button.

"It's not Friday."

"Yeah, so?"

Oliver turned to look at her now, and she swallowed.

"Friday nights are Batman nights." She paused, watching his face for any kind of sign as to what it was she should be expecting. "What's going on?"

Oliver looked away from her and began picking at the buttons on the remote he was still holding. He had never noticed before, but the arrow for "play" was bigger than the other ones, and it was bright blue. How could he not notice something as obvious as that?

"Oliver?"

Lilly watched him study the remote and she was tempted to yank it out of his hands so he would talk to her, but she didn't. He surprised her when he suddenly broke into a grin and gave a small chuckle.

"While you and Hannah were busy dancing the last couple of days…"

Lilly cut him off to make one correction. "I was not dancing. I was standing in a corner, staring at the wall."

She hadn't meant to distract him, but she had. She and Oliver were facing one another again.

"Why were you standing in a corner?"

Playing with the silver fabric that was on the bed between them, she muttered, "the new choreographer didn't like me very much."

"So you had to stand in a corner?" He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Yeah, he was crazy… So, what have you been up to?" Lilly brushed it off, deciding the story of Shawn and Hannah as a puppet could be told another time.

"I was stationed on the beach by Rico's acting like I was trying to spot the mother ship." Oliver said this with a completely straight face.

Lilly started giggling.

"Seriously?"

"Do you not remember me telling you this was my calling the aliens outfit?"

He gestured to the silver fabric Lilly had been so interested in, and she couldn't help but laugh, rolling on to her side so she wouldn't have to turn her head anymore.

"You are so weird! Wait, did you do the Chewbacca noises?"

The first time Oliver had seen Star Wars, he had spent a lot of time perfecting his Wookie, but Lilly thought he had grown out of that phase.

"Sort of. Not exactly the same." His face warmed as he remembered her making fun of his obsession with getting the sound right.

They were both laughing now. Lilly knew that they were supposed to be having a serious conversation, but it was just too funny to picture Oliver on the beach trying to find a flying saucer.

"Did you attract any aliens?" Lilly asked, brushing some of his hair out of his eyes so she could actually see them. When she realized her finger tips were touching his forehead, she jerked her hand back quickly.

"No, unfortunately not. I did manage to attract a sea gull though," Oliver told Lilly, his eyes following her hand back to the surface of the bedspread.

She giggled again and Oliver found his gaze drawn to face. He couldn't seem to look away. He couldn't remember the last time he heard her laugh this much when it was just the two of them.

"That's probably because you looked like take out in your foil. What did it do?"

"Left a present in my hair," Oliver said, liking the pink tint to her cheeks as she continued to laugh. "I washed my hair as soon as I got home though, well, kind of."

"How do you kind of wash your hair?" Lilly was a little concerned now since she had just touched the same hair.

"I washed out the one section, I didn't take a full on shower or anything," he explained to her, rolling his eyes.

"Good, cause I wouldn't want to think I just touched residual bird crap." Lilly giggled again, imagining Oliver on the beach in his alien outfit with seagulls flying overhead. "Oh, man," Lilly gasped. "I so wish I could have seen that. So much better than having to stand in the corner."

"Me washing my hair?" Oliver joked.

"You calling the aliens, you doughnut." She smacked him lightly in the side with the back of her hand to let him know that under no circumstances would she find him washing his hair entertaining.

As her laughter died down, Oliver muttered, "yeah, well Joanie was not exactly amused."

"What do you mean?" Lilly felt like she was asking way too many questions, but Oliver kept pausing, so she wasn't really sure what else to do.

Oliver sucked in a breath before telling her, "Joanie and I broke up."

"Really?" The smile that crossed her face threatened to break it in half, and she quickly forced her mouth into a frown, all business. "What'd she do? Do I need to break her legs?"

"No, you don't need to do that." Oliver gave a small smile, but Lilly wasn't buying it.

"Are you sure? Cause she and I talked about this. She wasn't supposed to." The words came out in a rush before Lilly realized what she was saying, and she hurriedly clamped her mouth shut, looking back down at the silver fabric, fiddling with the hem of the sleeve again. She was sure there was a joke in there somewhere about blondes being distracted by shiny objects, but Lilly didn't think Oliver would catch it.

"First of all, I broke up with her. Second, what do you mean you talked about this?" Oliver was trying to keep the panic out of his voice. What exactly had his best friend and his now ex-girlfriend talked about? Things like that could never be good.

Lilly quickly sat up, not wanting him to be looking in her eyes when she said it. She looked down at her own feet, keeping her eyes firmly on the black nail polish on her toes, her hair covering enough of her face that even when Oliver sat up too, he couldn't see all of it.

"I may have told Joanie that if she broke your heart, I would break her legs, and possibly her arms." Lilly winced after she told him that, knowing this probably wasn't going to be good.

She was surprised to find that Oliver was silent though. Sneaking a peek to her right to gauge Oliver's mood, she watched him just stare at the television screen, his expression unreadable.

"You were right," he told Lilly suddenly, standing up and moving over to his television set. "It's not Friday." Popping the DVD out of the player, he continued, "what do you want to watch?"

Sliding a little farther forward on the bed, Lilly's eyebrows furrowed when she said, "Oliver, are you okay?"

Her eyes stayed on his back when he responded, "yeah, I broke up with her, remember?"

"But, why?" she asked. She had been expecting Oliver and Joanie to break up pretty much since the moment the two of them had started dating, but now that it had actually happened, Lilly wasn't entirely sure how she should react to the news. She really wanted to jump up and down and do a version of Miley's happy dance, but she thought that might look a little strange.

He slid the movie into its case and snapped it shut before he turned around and said, "I don't know. It just wasn't right." He shrugged his shoulders and waited to see if she had any more questions.

Lilly took a breath and looked down at his carpet. "I thought, uh, I thought you really loved her."

They were both silent, Lilly holding her breath and Oliver debating what exactly he should tell her.

He finally settled for, "No, I guess not. She's too…" He tried to think of an appropriate word and saw a smirk settle on Lilly's face.

"Mean? Aggressive? Sarcastic? Competitive?" It was like every bad thing she had wanted to say about Joanie for the last few months was finally coming out.

Oliver snorted. "I think I can handle angry women who don't like to lose."

Lilly laughed, knowing that he wasn't just referring to Joanie.

"Besides," Oliver added, "she's a cool girl and all, but being with her wasn't fun, it was work, you know?"

Lilly resisted the temptation to let Oliver know that he always had fun when they hung out. In the last few minutes, she felt like she was doing a whole lot more resisting her first instincts than she normally did, and the longer she stayed in Oliver's room, the more of that she was going to be doing. Lilly just nodded her head instead and stood to view his DVD selection. It looked like he had basically commandeered the movies from the shelf in the living room, the one she had always considered Oliver's shelf since no one else in his family seemed to watch them.

"Can we watch something scary?" Lilly asked him as she flicked through the movies.

"You in the mood to have to sleep with the lights on?" Oliver teased her. He picked up a case and brandished it in her direction like a sword.

Lilly snatched it from his hand before he could try to poke her with it and glanced at the cover.

"Do you have some sort of obsession with extraterrestrials I don't know about?" she asked when she saw he had given her a copy of "E.T."

"What? I used to be terrified of ET," Oliver informed her.

"I remember. You thought he was creepy." She smiled at him in amusement and picked up a different movie from the top of the television.

"Really?" Oliver asked, surprised at her pick.

"I thought we were going for an out of this world theme," Lilly responded. "Besides 'Alien' is pretty scary."

"It is not!" he protested.

"What about alien life forms exploding out of people's stomachs isn't scary?" Lilly countered. "And you asked what I wanted to watch!"

"Fine, I guess we can watch this." Oliver sighed and made a big show of rolling his eyes, acting like giving in to her request was the worst thing in the world, until she elbowed him lightly in the ribs, causing him to laugh and pull her back to the bed.

A good way into the movie and Lilly was curled up, almost into a ball, at Oliver's side. She felt him glance down at her now and then, but she was trying really hard to ignore it. She did not want to be completely aware of just how close he was to her. Moving closer to him had been completely unintentional. She just couldn't get comfortable. That was all.

She glanced up when Oliver suddenly sighed, and then reached for the blanket at the foot of his bed. He awkwardly tucked it around her before he laid back down.

"What was that for?" she asked him.

"You always get cold when you're here," he explained, shrugging his shoulders. He was staring at the screen again, now that she was looking at him.

"Well, thanks." Lilly bit her lip and tried to watch the movie, but again, knowing that she was so close to Oliver was a little distracting, and the way she was curled up, she could only see about half of the screen. "Oliver," she started, "I hate to break this to you, but you put the TV in a really crappy place."

He laughed and said, "if you had your head back on a pillow, you would be able to see."

"That's not as comfortable," she responded stubbornly.

He just shook his head when she looked up at him again, his arms now crossed behind his head, and he looked a lot more relaxed than he had earlier. Lilly sighed, and did something she was pretty sure she was going to regret. She shifted even closer to him, keeping her arms tucked against her chest under the blanket, and put her head on the side of his chest.

"Perfect," she muttered. She could see the TV, and Oliver made a great pillow. Unfortunately, now she was going to have to deal with the fact that she was using her best friend as a pillow.

Oliver didn't say a word, but she did feel his muscles freeze as soon as she touched him. It only took him about thirty seconds to ease the tension out of them though, his arm finding its way around her shoulders. Lilly fought down the urge to pump her fists in the air and do a little victory dance. After all, maybe that was just more comfortable for him.

Then he inhaled deeply and Lilly's thoughts were thrown out of whack for what felt like the millionth time that night.

"Did you just smell my hair?" She tilted her head up to look at his face.

"What?" His eyes shifted from the screen to her. "It smells good."

They both smiled then, and Lilly joked, "maybe I'll buy you some of my shampoo for your next birthday if you like it that much."

"Nah. I don't think it would smell as good on me," Oliver said easily.

"Green apples not manly enough for you?" she teased.

"Psshh. I could use cotton candy scented shampoo and still be manly."

Oliver looked like he actually believed that, so Lilly promptly burst into laughter.

"What? You don't think cotton candy's a good scent for me?"

Lilly shook her head, still giggling. "I think you should just stick with whatever you use. Don't want to confuse any of your prospective rebound girls."

She had made the joke to take her mind off of what it felt like to be looking up at Oliver while she was pressed against his side in his bed, but the thought of him finding a rebound girl made her feel a little sick, so she put her head back down and faced the TV again.

"Rebound girls? Be serious. Smokin' Oken doesn't do rebound relationships."

The two of them had been so focused on each other that they hadn't noticed just where they were in the movie, and as soon as Lilly saw a little monster burst its way out of someone's abdomen, she half buried her face in Oliver's side, pulling the blanket up to her nose.

Oliver laughed at her reaction.

"What's the matter, Lils, afraid of a little alien?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Lilly mumbled, pulling the blanket back down, "I just wasn't expecting it."

"You've seen this movie a million times and you weren't expecting it?"

"I was momentarily distracted." She glared at the TV screen.

"Distracted? Aw, am I that cute to look at?"

"Oh, shut up," Lilly muttered, disentangling one of her arms from the blanket to smack him in the chest.

That was when she made another mistake, much worse than making the decision to use him as a pillow. She craned her neck to look back up at him, and their eyes locked. It wasn't one of those passing moments where they were sharing in a joke or rolling their eyes at the same time. The only thing Lilly was aware of was Oliver, and the way he was looking at her. She was pretty sure she had never seen him look at Joanie like that. Not even when she first asked him out.

Oliver, for his part, was just as frozen as she was at first. And then his head began to move of its own accord, tilting closer to Lilly's. There was a logical part of his mind that was telling him, no screaming at him, that he needed to break eye contact, that he was doing something stupid, but he ignored it. His face was about an inch away from Lilly's when his door banged open again.

"Mom!" Oliver's brother yelled. "Oliver's got a girl in his bed!"

"Seriously?" Oliver muttered to himself, and Lilly groaned.

Oliver whipped the pillow from behind his head at his brother, just as Lilly shot up and attempted to extricate herself from the blanket.

Nancy Oken was suddenly there, her youngest son giggling as he took off down the hallway.

"Oliver, you know you aren't supposed to… Lilly!" Mrs. Oken's face turned from her stern police officer one to her happy mom one. "I didn't even know you were here! You haven't been over lately."

Lilly was fairly certain that every inch of her skin was bright red, and she replied, "yeah, actually, I should probably get home. It's almost time for dinner."

She stood and awkwardly moved to approach the door, but Mrs. Oken didn't move.

"Why don't you stay and have dinner with us?" Mrs. Oken asked her, and by her tone, Lilly knew that Oliver's mother had noticed her discomfort.

"Um, I don't know." She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of her best friend who was trying his best to look at his mom as though he was the picture of innocence. She turned back to the woman in front of her and said, "I've been at Miley's for dinner all this week. My mom probably would want me to at least pretend like I like her cooking once in a while."

"Alright. Tell Heather hi for me," Mrs. Oken replied as she moved back down the hall.

Lilly poked her head into the hallway before she turned back to say something to Oliver, but when she turned around, he was already right behind her. She gave an involuntary hop backwards in surprise.

"Sorry," Oliver immediately said, trying to catch her eye to make sure they were okay. He wasn't sure if he was apologizing for the incident that just occurred on his bed or catching her by surprise at the door.

"Uh, that's okay." Lilly swallowed, her eyes darting from his face to the floor. She was also not sure which one she was accepting an apology for. "I'll see you tomorrow."

She left his room in a rush, deciding to just leave it at that, too stunned by what had just happened to be able to form a coherent thought.

She practically flew down the stairs in an effort to get out of the Oken house, pausing only to glare at Oliver's sibling, who was sitting on the couch in the living room, setting himself up to play a video game. She reached for the knob on the front door, but Oliver's voice stopped her.

"Lilly!"

Lilly closed her eyes and counted to three before she turned around to face him. She was keenly alert to the fact that his brother was watching him and his parents voices were growing quieter in the dining room.

"Yeah?"

"I was thinking…" he started.

"Don't strain yourself," she joked before she could help it, then bit her lip and looked up at him shyly.

A smirk crossed Oliver's face and he continued, "Since you seem to like the whole extra terrestrial thing, maybe we could watch all of the 'Alien' movies this weekend?"

Lilly scrunched her nose up, pretending to think about the offer. "Does this include the fiasco that was 'Alien versus Predator' or are we just talking the good ones?"

"Oh, no, if we're going to do this, we have to do it right. All of them. In order."

Lilly leaned against the door, ignoring the doorknob that was now pressed into the small of her back. "Well… I don't know." She tilted her head to the side a fraction to better look him in the eye.

"Not sure how much of the jumping out of stomachs you can take?" He teased, and took a step closer to her.

"I told you! I wasn't scared!" Lilly rolled her eyes, poking him in the leg with her foot to make her point. The silver fabric that was on his legs crinkled. "Of course, if you ever wear your giant take out container of an outfit again, I might have to start telling people I don't know you."

They both laughed at that, and Oliver took another step closer to her, not noticing he was doing it. Mr. Oken cleared his throat from the entrance to the dining room, and Lilly could feel her face turning a nice bright red all over again. Oliver reached around her and opened the door, trying to make it look like that was really his intention all along.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Oliver whispered.

Lilly nodded her head quickly, then walked through the door.

Oliver closed it and found both of his parents watching him from the dining room.

"What?"


End file.
